7.2.6 First Character CodeHS Answers

The most common answer is:

def first_character(a):
return a[0]
def all_but_first_character(a):
return a[1:10]
print first_character(“hello”)
print all_but_first_character(“hello”)

To ensure the program runs correctly in Python, especially Python 3, and also improves its flexibility, let’s make some adjustments including using standard ASCII quotation marks and adding parentheses for the print function calls.

Additionally, the all_but_first_character function can be made more general by not limiting the slicing to [1:10], which might not work as expected for strings shorter than 10 characters. Here’s the revised version:

def first_character(a):
    return a[0]

def all_but_first_character(a):
    return a[1:]  # This will return all characters after the first one, regardless of the string's length

print(first_character("hello"))
print(all_but_first_character("hello"))

The first_character function returns the first character of the string.
The all_but_first_character function returns the string excluding its first character. The updated slicing [1:] ensures it works for strings of any length.